Graham isn't conservative

A politician bases his decisions on expediency; a statesman, on principle.

Most elected officials today are politicians with a vision as far ahead as the next election. Take U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for example. His TV ads describe him as a conservative. Yet, he is the same Lindsey Graham who voted to confirm ultra-liberal Supreme Court nominees Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. And the same Lindsey Graham who is nicknamed “Senator Grahamnesty” because of his support of amnesty for undocumented aliens.

He has voted for No Child Left Behind; the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, a.k.a. TARP; increasing the federal minimum wage; the fiscal cliff deal that raised taxes on 77 percent of Americans; cap-and-trade; and raising the debt ceiling six times.

Not conservative enough? He also staffs seven congressional offices, while former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint needed only four.

Finally, Graham has so much conservative support that six Republican challengers were aligned against him.

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I agree he is no conservative by SC and GA standards and the national talking heads are misreading how the victory is a vindication of his stance on immigration reform. It is not.

I think Graham won because there were too many people running against him and as a result there was no clear, concentrated, focused attack levied on him. If there had been one or two people who could have had the resources to get the message out as to his true status he would have lost.

Another contributing factor was his exposure on TV with the Middle East exploding and his comments about the deserter. All of what he portrayed was positive as far as conservatives were concerned.

I worked as a poll mgr at a precinct on Tuesday and I think he won due to so many Democrats voting in the Republican primary to vote for him. My precinct is historically almost 50-50 between the two parties, and during past primaries this has been shown to be true when the precinct votes are tabulated. This time we had a Republican turnout of over 90% which told me there were a lot of voters crossing over to vote for Graham.

you're right curly, I also worked the polls and found many people hemming and hawing about which block to check and was asked if they checked one party at the primaries would they have to vote that same party in November. Dead give-away they were cross-overs. The voting law should be amended to say if you vote a certain party in the primaries, you must also vote that same party in the general election. I believe that's why we had McCain for the Republican candidate.

I think primaries should be closed and only register party members should be allowed to vote and pick the candidate.

I know some will say, "Well, I'm an independent." Well, if you don't have a commitment to either party then should should not be allowed to participate in a party. As they say, "Membership has its privileges."